Disc Players

Borrowing heavily from the design of its PD-70AE CD/SACD player [HFN May '18] with its two ESS9026 Pro DACs, the performance of the UDP-LX800 is nigh-on identical, with very minor 'tweaks'. Once again the player's THD and noise is largely governed by the balanced analogue stage over the top 20dB of its dynamic range. So, at the maximum 4.3V output, distortion is 0.0012-0.0235% (20Hz-20kHz) but this drops to 0.0002-0.0006% at –15dBFs and 0.0009-0.0025% at –30dBFs [see Graph 1, below]. High frequency distortion, and noise, is necessarily higher via SACD because of its requantisation noise – amounting to 0.044%/20kHz and 0.055%/30kHz. The response via SACD is also governed by the player's filtering of this noise, but reaches out to –0.3dB/20kHz, –0.5dB/40kHz, –3.0dB/60kHz, –9.1dB/80kHz and –17.4dB/100kHz (slightly flatter than the PD-70AE).

The response via CD and USB-A digital inputs is determined by your choice of digital filter. The default 'Sharp' is a linear phase type offering a modest 58dB of stopband rejection and a response that's flat to –0.05dB/20kHz, –0.4dB/45kHz and –1.0dB/90kHz with CD/48kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz media, respectively. 'Short' and 'Slow' are both minimum phase types with no pre-ringing, but trades exaggerated and reduced post-ringing for steep and gentle treble roll-offs, respectively. 'Short' extends to –0.1dB/20kHz while 'Slow' is flat to within ±0.1dB up to 16kHz but then rolls off to –5.0dB/20kHz. Regardless of filter or media, the A-wtd S/N is a wide 113.5dB and low-level linearity good to ±0.1dB over a 100dB dynamic range. Jitter, at all sample rates, falls within 50-100psec but requantisation noise is clear to see – if inaudible – with SACD [red spectrum, Graph 2]. PM